I’ve been wondering why NYE feels like such a thing for me this year. It feels weird to me that the start of the year lands in the middle of the darkest season. Who chose Dec 31st as Dec 31st? Why isn’t Jan 1st the day after the winter solstice or the start of spring? It doesn’t make much sense to me. It has me also curious if the months are also subjective. I wonder about all the ways humans have made constructs around nature in order to bend it. Constructing constructs, more threads, chains, connections back to the box. Conditioning layered upon conditioning until our ability to be softened and manipulated becomes second nature. How malleable are we? How many stories are we carrying all the time about how things should be, how time should move, how we should move through it?
After racking my brain on this seeming incongruence, I decided to do a bit of research on the calendar we’ve all agreed to use here in the western world. Turns out, the ancient Egyptians were the first to create a 365-day calendar around 4,000 years ago. They divided the year into three seasons based on the Nile’s flooding cycle - each season had four months of 30 days, plus five extra days at the end of the year that were just for celebrating the birthdays of gods. No work, just rest and ritual. Then the Romans came along and fucked it all up with their superstitions about even numbers being unlucky, giving us this chaotic mix of 29, 30, and 31-day months. Julius Caesar tried to fix it in 46 BC by creating the Julian calendar, redistributing days to make most months either 30 or 31 days.
But here’s the thing, our current calendar has almost nothing to do with natural cycles anymore. The months don’t align with the moon’ths (which is where the word “month” even comes from), and the year resets in the dead of winter instead of at a solstice or equinox. We’re living by a system designed for Roman administrative convenience and Egyptian flood patterns, held together by Pope Gregory XIII’s 1582 tweak to keep Easter from drifting. It’s a perfect metaphor for how we live, constructing constructs around nature, trying to control and bend what was never meant to be controlled.
I've had resistance to creating goals or intentions for 2026 outside of my financial and business ones, the kind chained to the Gregorian calendar. Who is Gregory anyways? Why does his calendar get to dictate when we reset our year, right in the middle of a season meant for deep rest and self contemplation?
So instead, I’m going to offer a recollection of the last season, from autumnal equinox to winter solstice, in opposition to the recollection of a Gregorian calendar year. This resistance, I’m realizing, isn’t about the calendar at all. It’s about my resistance to surrender. To letting life move through me instead of trying to grip the steering wheel from the backseat.
When the body speaks
In September I really reached my limits with the way my body was processing stress. She spoke loudly through migraine headaches. My office manager part decided that there were too many papers on her desk to complete and so the office needed to shut down for a while. My nervous system was demanding for a time out.
For months I treated the migraines like an enemy. Another problem to solve, another thing to manage, another paper on the desk. I researched supplements, tracked triggers, adjusted my sleep schedule, eliminated foods. I was trying to control her, to fix her, to make her stop interrupting my life. The grip was exhausting.
In October I finally began to listen. No longer seeing the migraines as a problem but simply a loud alarm from my intelligent system, a true ominous letter from the body. The shift wasn’t in what I did but in how I related to what was happening. I stopped trying to silence her and started asking what she needed to say.
I started seeing a 5 elements acupuncturist and parts work coach weekly to give my nervous system and subconscious the opportunity to speak outside of my migraine blackout times. Working with Dr. Love (yes that’s his real name) for the first time in 6.5 years has been invaluable. I also upped my therapy routine, shifting from monthly to bi-weekly for a couple months. Laura Jaster, a Hakomi therapist who I’ve been working with for over 6 years, has been an essential mentor in the witnessing and reflecting of my journey.
I am aware of how privileged the above is and I want to acknowledge how insanely valuable community is when experiencing any sort of health crisis or challenging time in general. It takes a village, and mine showed up in multiple forms, paid practitioners yes, but also text threads with girlfriends sharing their migraine rituals, offering remedies passed down through their own journeys with pain. This time has reinforced the importance of receptivity for me. I can’t do it alone, whether it’s people I pay to support me or the incredible mirrors I have in my friends, family, and partner. I really believe that when we truly listen to the body’s calls and take them seriously, we can prevent a much more serious situation. But listening requires surrender. It requires putting down the need to control the outcome and instead becoming curious about what’s actually here.
When structures shift
In the beginning of October I was in Mexico City producing an event. I found out days after getting there that there were going to be some major changes to the organizational structure of my production team. They ended up letting go of people I adore and deeply value, both in work and personal contexts.
Naturally I took this hard. I not only had to lose some of my favorite people at work but also felt a lot of fear about operating with a slimmer workforce. I had been burned before by organizational shifts so the trust I was feeling was at an all time low. My grip tightened. I tried to control what I could control, braced for the worst, prepared myself for being buried under more work. Usually layoffs, historically from what I’ve heard from others, means the people who stay have way more work.
But here’s what I’m learning about surrender, sometimes the thing you’re gripping so hard is already gone. The structure I was trying to hold had already shifted. My white-knuckling wasn’t preventing anything, it was just keeping me from being present to what was actually happening. And what was actually happening, shockingly, was that I didn’t end up with more work, which is something I’m still settling into. I miss my team a lot, and they are incredibly talented women who I know will land on their feet stronger than ever and already have in a lot of ways. I feel proud of what we built together in the last 4+ years. But I can also feel the gift in letting go of trying to control a reality that was never mine to control in the first place.
When water decides
In November a home insurance claim from the flood in my house in May finally got settled. Six months of paperwork, phone calls, bureaucratic nightmares. We definitely got screwed a bit but being done with this was a massive weight lifted off my shoulders.
There’s something poetic about water forcing its way into the structure of my home, into the controlled space I’d built. Water doesn’t ask permission. It moves where it moves. And I spent months resisting what had already happened, trying to make it different, trying to get back what was lost. The settlement wasn’t what I wanted but the completion was everything I needed, not because I won, but because I finally stopped fighting.
When love asks for presence
This season also brought tenderness. My dad and brother met my partner’s parents, which was a big planted flag for our relationship. My partner and I went to our first retreat together and had a massively expansive experience which I’m still riding the highs of. My monthly in-person Introduction to the Wheel of Consent workshop filled way up. On Halloween, from the advice of a dear sister of mine, I had my bi-yearly bender which felt fucking freeing and just what I needed... we came home around 5am. My younger self chuckling to herself due to the amount of sunrises she used to see in a month.
After not having an in-person office since the flood in the house, I started renting an office in town to see clients part time. Reigniting in-person sessions has stoked my fire in a major way. I also started apprenticing with a long time friend and mentor which has shifted the way I see through my eyes. I’m spending more time in appreciation, more time outside, more time in love with life.
In December my partner and I deepened our body wisdom in a Cranial Somatics course with our dear friend and legendary body worker Kiefer Avi. And something shifted with the boys in our house. We’re establishing that they call me their “most fun adult” which is way cooler than step parent... to be clear they suggested it.
My mentor has been challenging me to explore what it means to be a parent. I’m realizing now that a parent is a guide, and the best guides are the ones that show up in an embodied and authentic way. I’m no longer afraid of vulnerable conversations with the little dudes because I know they deserve my authentic expression. This too is surrender, letting go of performing “good step-parent” and instead just being present, being real, being the messy human I actually am. The more I pour them with love the more they let me in and jeez, a hug from a child unprompted is one of the best feelings in the world. I know that they can feel when I’m gripping, trying to be something I’m not. They relax when I relax.
What surrender actually feels like
When I stop gripping, I start being present. And presence feels like experiencing tiny miracles throughout the day constantly. It feels like finding myself examining the contours of the clouds above and the tonality of the brushes of snow atop the mountains in the distance. It feels like inhabiting my body, listening for her cues rather than quickly researching how to change her.
I close with a deep sense of appreciation for the prior season of stretching me in ways I was very, very resistant to for a long time, offering me the opportunity to garner the courage to be present, sensuous, and allowing, reestablishing the remembering of agency and choice I’ve always had. Not the agency to control everything, but the agency to choose how I relate to what’s happening. The choice to let go. The choice to trust. The choice to stop scratching my fingernails on the side of the well and let myself drop to the bottom, where it turns out, the water is just fine.
honestly hate the gregorian calendar and i try hard to exclusively follow the hebrew calendar which moves with the moon. New moon, New month. and these months focus on the inward 🙏🏽
beautiful share, thank you for your presence 🤍
Masterful surrender, Sis. You’re a guiding light! Thankyou for sharing this piece..